[audience cheering, applauding]
Hey!
- [grunts] - [audience member whistles]
Welcome!
[vocalizing]
Good evening, everybody. My name is Jon Stewart.
Welcome to the finale of season 2 of The Problem.
[stammers]
- [audience cheering] - I thought that would get--
No, I thought-- Uh, it just seemed--
It was met-- met with apathy on that one really.
- [audience laughs] - Welcome to the finale.
- Oh! Uh, my name is Jon Stewart. - [audience chuckling]
Obviously huge news this week that everyone’s talking about.
Finally, the new Barbie posters are here.
- [audience cheering, applauding] - [Stewart] I mean, come on!
Come on!
Looking good!
No one passes over this Yiddishe queen.
[audience chuckling]
- [audience chuckling] - [chuckles]
That’s a Passover thing, I think. I don’t know.
Of course, the other news this week was
the official indictment of former president Donald J. Trump.
- [audience cheering, applauding] - It--
- [mouthing] You bastards. - [applause continues]
[clears throat] And the finale of season 2.
[audience chuckles, applauding]
No! I don’t even want it! I don’t want your sympathy.
I don’t want your sympathy applause.
Donald J. Trump was indicted. It was the climax to the weeks-long orgy
of media speculation and anticipation.
And like most orgies, it began with directions.
[reporter 1] Live pictures from Palm Beach.
The former president expected to be leaving any second.
[reporter 2] Currently on Ocean Boulevard.
And it’s gonna be taking a right turn onto Southern Boulevard,
five miles directly east to get to the airport.
And he will be crossing over onto Bingham Island,
which is the causeway that connects Palm Beach to West Palm Beach.
We should expect this ride to be about five, six minutes at that point, Andrea,
before he arrives to Palm Beach International Airport.
[audience chuckling]
Oh, my God. MapQuest is such a good TV show.
[audience laughing]
What happens next?
[reporter 3] The former president is gonna get out of that car and...
We’re obviously at quite a distance to see if
that is he going up the steps, the back of the plane.
[audience chuckling]
You fucking hate yourselves, don’t you?
[audience laughing]
Now, of course, you can make the case that the news media soiled themselves
in up-to-the-second footage narration,
but this has been a difficult time for them.
You see, the president was indicted on Thursday. A historic event.
But unfortunately, the indictment was sealed until the arraignment on Tuesday,
which left them only five days of abject, unanswerable speculation.
- To the dumbass machine! - [audience chuckling]
So what will the upshot be politically of Donald Trump’s indictment?
Can I just get your kind of Chris-o-meter,
in terms of, um, how much you think this changes the country, if at all?
Do you think the case in Manhattan benefits his political campaign?
Will it help him or hurt him?
You think historians will look back and say it helped Trump get reelected?
This was a commercial-free, nonstop circle jerk-ararium.
[audience chuckling]
Now, normally I would say, all right, you’re overly excited
and O.J. hasn’t killed anybody in years...
[audience chuckling]
...and I’m sure you could be talking more about Florida passing permitless carry
or Nashville's student protests
or the heartless killing of a nine-year-old’s goat.
- Her goat! - [audience chuckling]
And worse, her goat was killed by this man!
[shouting] No!
Damn you!
First you ski into Gwyneth Paltrow...
[audience laughing]
...and then you kill that girl’s goat.
Will this skiing optometrist stop at nothing?
Am I the only one who watched that trial?
- Why’s everybody-- - [audience laughs]
But perhaps the media’s speculation and anticipation and wonder
will all be worth it.
For on indictment day, it was Christmas morn for all.
The indictment can now be unsealed
and that is what we’re all waiting for with bated breath.
I’d love to just show everyone what we’ve been waiting for.
This is the indictment. So we now have it.
He’s charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records
in the first degree.
[inhales sharply] Oh, my God, I’m going to fuck the shit out of that indictment.
[grunts] Oh, yeah! Read it to me.
[audience chuckling]
Can I tell you something? I’m so old that I do now literally only fuck
- on a rolling chair. - [audience laughing]
It’s the only momentum I can build up.
If your hips don’t move anymore, you need something to swivel.
[chuckles]
All right, the indictment came down. It’s 30--
You know what? I just forgot. I’m not a lawyer.
Is-- Is any of this normal?
This DA’s office prosecutes this crime all the time.
This is a mundane business records crime that is not uncommon
and it’s not uncommon from this prosecutor.
Oh. Well, that’s awesome.
That’s, uh, just a normal indictment charging Donald J. Trump
with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Or to translate that into jaded news-ish...
Do you see anything new in there today that you didn’t know?
No. In fact, I, um-- It-- It’s kind of expected
that there would be less than people would want to read.
People felt it was a little underwhelming.
Some found it disappointing.
It depressed some people on the left.
Oh, were you disappointed?
Were you depressed? Here’s why.
’Cause you treated this like the final confrontation with Thanos
and then it actually just played out like what it was,
a boring-as-shit legal procedure at the very beginning of
what will be a long, drawn-out, laborious legal process
because as I mentioned earlier, law is boring as shit.
[audience chuckling]
But please continue being let down
by the expectations you motherfuckers created.
This is one of the most historic cases,
arguably the most significant case right now, in an American court system.
It appears to be built on a pretty shaky foundation.
It’s a bubble case. It’s not a slam dunk.
Commentators across the spectrum are saying,
"Boy, there’s really not much in here."
Raises all kinds of questions about the legal theory behind this case.
An unimpressive document.
Right, ’cause it’s not the trial.
You’re thinking of the trial part.
It’s like if you look at a recipe for apple brown Betty
and go, "Butter, apple, cinnamon. I don’t know, I’m underwhelmed.
This isn’t-- This isn’t delicious at all."
Yeah, ’cause it’s fucking paper. It’s the recipe.
It’s not the game, it’s the roster.
And by the way, only our media, those cloistered, short-attention-span,
own-ass-spelunking--
- [audience chuckling] - [audience member cheers]
- No, defenders of democracy... - [audience chuckling]
...find a president paying hush money to a Playboy model and an adult film star,
and then cooking the books to help himself win an election, underwhelming and boring.
By the way, does anybody-- and this is just an off-topic thing--
did anyone think $130,000 to Stormy Daniels seems a little light?
Is that-- In this economy, in this mark--
[stammers] The only thing I’m thinking is
you could probably get that much hush money for banging an alderman.
- Like, it’s-- - [audience laughing]
I’ve seen people get $750,000 for spilling coffee on themselves.
Like, that’s just a dollar figure not of this era.
That’s some shit, like, Taft or Coolidge would have pulled.
[audience laughing]
Coolidge would have been like, "How about $130,000
or perhaps, hmm, a Model T?"
[audience laughing]
But I’m sorry, I interrupted you.
The one person we have not heard from is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
- Now, he is still in recovery... - Yeah.
- ...after that fall. - Mm-hmm.
But talk about why the silence of Mitch McConnell,
fall or no fall, speaks volumes.
[audience chuckling]
I’m gonna go with "fall."
[audience laughing]
Let me ask you, coma or no coma,
why hasn’t Mitch McConnell responded or at least dilated his pupils?
Epic fucking media fail.
Now, there was a media organization that shined,
that executed this story exactly the way
their organization was intended to execute this story.
Or at least according to their texts and emails.
Fox News, a network founded on two sacred principles:
that women should never wear pants
and Republican presidents should never face consequences. Literally.
Roger Ailes invented Fox News
to make sure that the next Nixon got away with it, to protect their king.
So how did they meet the moment?
Pure, unadulterated, uncut, right in the veins, fear-laced catastrophizing.
I think this is a dark day, a dark moment in American history.
[Levin] This is a war on the party. It is a war on conservatism and MAGA.
This country will become a banana republic.
The rule of law in the United States of America died.
- [anchor] It’s dead. - It’s dead.
It’s like Stalin’s purges.
Probably not the best time to give up your AR-15.
The most threatening thing to our republic
since South Carolina fired shots at Fort Sumter and started the Civil War.
- [audience chuckles] - [in Southern accent] I-- I say, I say,
- what there, boy? - [audience laughs]
You Yankees think you can come down here
and keep me from utilizing fraudulent accounting to pay my adult film--
Well, not film, I guess, back then.
But-- Stage?
[normal voice] I don’t know what they did back then for porn.
Did they have porn in the 18th ce-- All right.
- [audience laughing] - [chuckles]
That’s crazy.
But I’m not quite ready yet
to take up arms against my fellow countrymen over this.
Do you have anything else?
I’m gonna make a prediction.
By 2025, we are going to be at war.
We are going to have a new dollar,
a currency that probably is coming from the central bank.
We’ll have a currency collapse, uh,
and we will live in a virtual police state.
The Bill of Rights is gone.
Please turn to God, repent, pray for our country, pray for peace.
Put on the full armor of God.
[audience chuckling]
Full armor of God and pray for p--
Yes, as it says in the Bible,
"Blessed are the real estate moguls for they shall inherit the earth."
Well, more of the earth than they inherited when they were born,
which was already a substantial part of the earth, but--
Shit got weird over at Fox.
Now, all of a sudden, consensual is a felony?
[audience chuckling]
First of all, why does it seem like he’s just learning the word consensual?
[audience laughs]
But yeah, that’s what they’re doing.
They’re charging Trump with a felony for consensual sex.
That’s exactly what they’re doing.
But the greatest mind trick, the Jedi mind trick
in the reality distortion field of Fox’s arsenal came next.
He’s become a symbol.
He’s become a symbol for the disaffected man and woman
and the forgotten person in America.
They see Donald Trump as a symbol, really, of freedom--
As a symbol for all the freedom-loving patriots in this country.
They’re really coming after all of us.
He’s the one that’s standing in the way
and he’s been that figure for us for so many years.
They gotta take him out so they can get to the rest of us.
But he’s gonna stand firm and strong.
If there was ever somebody to fight this fight, it’s Donald Trump.
There it is folks. Donald Trump, selfless hero.
A man who cannot go anywhere
unless his name is in giant letters on that conveyance
is an egoless freedom fighter for the little man,
battling desperately until there is no one in his inner circle left
to go to jail for him.
A man whose malignant narcissism knows no bounds.
Yeah, that guy is actually on the ramparts, shielding the regular joes.
This motherfucker is so selfish, he didn’t even give his sons a jawline.
[audience laughing]
My jawline, not their jawline, mine!
Trump is not fighting for you.
You are his human shields and you always have been.
And it’s a shame,
because I’m not sure I would agree with any of you politically,
but you deserve better.
Let’s get to the panel.
[audience applauding, cheering]
So...
the media is screwing this up.
To talk about why and how, we are joined remotely by Norman Ornstein,
a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute.
Did I wake you up, Norman?
You-- I-- I-- You know, I’m now really upset
because I left my full armor of God at home
- and I’m not gonna have it for my seder. - [chuckles]
- I don’t know what I’m gonna do. - Why don’t you--
And a chag sameach to you and the, what, the one Jew in the audience.
Thank you. You should always have your full armor of God.
Norman Ornstein, uh, in-- in all your experience,
you’ve written books about the rise of Trump,
about, uh, the media-industrial complex.
I’m angrier at CNN almost more than any other organization.
Why is coverage this way?
The one thing that I find most disturbing about the media,
is that there’s no learning curve whatsoever.
This is a guy who called them, uh, basically the worst things imaginable.
That, uh, the first people to go,
if we ever get to that Trumpian autocracy, are gonna be the press.
And they play into his hands over and over again.
And, you know, the way they treated this, which you handled absolutely brilliantly,
making this huge deal out of it and then saying there’s a nothing burger there,
is just disgraceful. Uh...
- And it’s not benign. - Maybe they are the enemy of the people.
It’s not benign.
Fox has weaponized misinformation,
the internet has weaponized misinformation.
And if you don’t have a tenacious counterforce
battling that position at every turn,
then misinformation that’s been weaponized wins the day.
Absolutely so, and of course, what’s also happened is
they bring on people who lie and who exaggerate
and there is no pushback whatsoever.
They are normalizing the abnormal, they’re hyping what shouldn’t be hyped
and they’re giving a pass to things that shouldn’t get a pass.
And it happens over and over and over again.
It’s Friday the 13th, uh, part 27 right now.
Ooh, is that coming out, Norman? Because that sounds interesting.
It’ll be on CNN.
[Stewart, audience laughing]
I really do wonder sometimes,
in a healthy country, in a healthy democracy,
you would think that the efforts that Donald Trump and his inner circle went
to circumvent a democratic election
would be disqualifying in a myriad of ways.
Why do you think we are unable to hold presidents to account?
One of the things that’s disturbing about this,
and we saw this throughout Trump’s presidency,
scandal after scandal after scandal, and the press couldn’t handle it.
Everything washed over itself.
And we’re gonna see this now with the different indictments that go forward.
But they have to have a frame where each president, in that sense,
is viewed in the same way.
So the scandal with Barack Obama was he wore a tan suit.
- I remember that, I remember that suit. - And Donald Trump basically taking--
- Yeah, it was a nice suit. - Yeah.
And... [stammers] ...what’s so disturbing about this
is that you don’t see any sense of self-reflection, any willingness to change
and it’s leading us in a very bad place.
It does expose the river of corruption
at the heart of the American so-called democratic capitalist system.
That this idea of paying for favor,
this moat that surrounds the nation’s capital
that’s filled with, uh, money that nobody can trace
and lobbyists that are not accountable to anybody.
We’re Tammany Hall.
And this entire country is built, uh, right now
on that pay-to-play premise.
Donald Trump has spent 60 years paying off people,
using the system for his own good to avoid accountability.
And whatever the press does,
let’s hope the legal system finally brings some measure of accountability.
And I-- I also wanna say, Jon, that the stuff that, uh, was said about,
"Oh, well, there’s nothing new here,"
we actually know some new facts here.
Including the fact
that Trump wanted to hold, uh, Stormy Daniels, uh--
To stay quiet through the election campaign
and then not pay her.
So he could bilk her even as he tried to use this to steal the election.
Uh, we’re gonna find out a lot more
and it involves a lot more than just Donald Trump.
There was a massive attempt to use this process days before the election,
after the tapes had come out from Access Hollywood,
to avoid accountability in an election.
And while this is not as serious as promoting a violent insurrection...
Correct.
...as trying to convince the Secretary of State in Georgia
and the governor to give him back Georgia by stealing 10,700-plus votes,
the fact is that this probably had more to do
with him winning the 2016 election illegitimately...
- [Stewart] Right. - ...than those other things.
Uh, Norman, it’s all information that really grabs me by my pussy.
- It really does. - [audience chuckling]
Uh, Norman Ornstein, thank you so much for joining us today.
Well, you’re a celebrity, so you should.
- [Stewart] Excellent work! - Thank you.
- So... - [audience applauding]
Ah!
A powerful person is being put through a legal process that is,
quite frankly, ordinary for many people.
Or to put that another way...
I never thought anything like this could happen in America.
I never thought it could happen.
If I had, I-I probably wouldn’t have committed all those crimes...
- [audience chuckles] - ...for all those years.
But if there’s one positive,
it’s that those on the right are now finally woke to something
that the powerless have experienced for centuries.
There’s a two-tiered system of justice.
There is no longer in this country--
And I say this with a lot of sadness, equal justice under the law
or equal application of our laws.
Sadly, we do have a two-tiered system of justice.
What are we going to do about these two standards of justice?
[imitating Edith Bunker] Archie, Archie?
[audience laughs]
There’s a two-tiered system of justice, Archie.
Oh... [stammers] ...now Meathead is here.
[audience laughs]
[normal voice] But there is. But here’s the thing--
You know Trump is in the good tier, right?
He’s in this tier.
Former President Trump successful today
in a request to delay the release of White House documents.
Trump’s lawyers filed to have her case moved from state to federal court...
...refusing to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry.
He is challenging that subpoena.
Block the FBI from looking at the seized materials
until a special master can be appointed.
Oh, yeah, Your Honor,
I prefer you not look at the liquor store security footage
until a, uh, special master that don’t--
Fuck it! Easy on the wrists.
[audience laughs]
To be fair, you are well within your rights
to vigorously defend yourself against legal charges.
And that’s what this process is going to entail.
But in the not-good tier, you don’t have the resources to do that.
And chances are you don’t have this either.
DonaldJTrump.com. Go tonight.
Give the president some money to fight this bullshit.
[audience chuckling]
You are not in the bad tier of our justice system
if a US senator is fronting your GoFundMe page.
But as those in the bad tier know, when in doubt,
launch veiled threats on the prosecutors’ and judges’ families.
This lunatic special prosecutor named Jack Smith,
I wonder what it was prior to a change.
I have a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family.
Whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris
and now receives money from the Biden-Harris campaign.
Look, I’m not a lawyer
but I’m pretty sure most people can’t get away with doing that.
You know what else they can’t do?
Just claim that by their nature of being,
they are universally, cosmically unable to crime.
Donald Trump is actually claiming absolute immunity
from criminal investigation.
- How much crime do you have to do... - [audience laughs]
...to build up absolute immunity?
Is that immunity coming from committing crimes
or did you get the crime jab?
Did you get the jab?
The MRNA-Bill-Gates-crime jab?
He’s tracking your crime.
Trump has used privilege and wealth
to protect himself from legal accountability at every turn.
He has lived his entire adult life in the space twixt illegal and unethical.
He’s in the tier where you get the platinum arraignment package.
No cuffs. No mug shot.
All-you-can-eat fingerprint ink.
You think regular people get to surround themselves
with a meat shield of henchmen to go to prison in their place?
But if you really wanna know what tier Donald Trump is in,
let’s look at an actual fraud we know he was guilty of.
He used his own charitable foundation like a piggy bank.
Or as it’s sometimes known: embezzlement.
[reporter 4] "A shocking pattern of illegality,
including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign,
repeated and willful self-dealing and much more."
He stole from his own charitable foundation.
How much more could--
What, did he also nut punch a priest? Like...
[audience laughs]
How are non-Trumps punished for something like that?
Well, some get two years in jail.
Some get five years in jail.
Some get ten years in jail
for stealing from charitable donations.
But what happened to this selfless... [swallows]
...shield of the working man?
[audience chuckles]
Well, he agreed to shut down his charity piggy bank
and paid a $2 million settlement.
Or on your Trump conversion chart, 15-16 porn star hushings.
He wasn’t even charged with a crime.
So when people say this...
It’s selective prosecution and it’s wrong.
Selective prosecution on steroids.
It does feel like a selective prosecution.
If his name were John Smith,
no, Bragg would not be bringing this case.
If his name was John Smith, he’d be in jail already.
He-- Yes.
[audience laughs]
It’s all selective prosecution.
And when you’re in the good tier, you can do whatever you want
and you’re probably gonna be fine.
In fact, you might even be president twice.
- [audience cheering, applauding] - Anyway, we got ourselves--
We do have a two-tiered system of justice.
And we’re gonna talk to someone who’s actually been a victim of this system,
and someone who can verify what’s broken.
Please welcome Melissa Murray, a legal scholar and law professor at NYU
and an MSNBC/NBC News contributor.
And Jay Jordan, CEO of Alliance for Safety and Justice
and National Director of the TimeDone campaign,
which organizes people with past conviction records
to eliminate the barriers blocking them from success.
Guys, welcome to the program.
[audience cheers, applauds]
Jay, I’m gonna talk to you first.
- Uh, you’ve been in the system. - Yeah.
You have spent time in jail.
When you were arraigned, did you pick the Zoom option?
And did you go with the optional-mug-shot, no-handcuffs approach,
or did you say, "I want the traditional experience"?
[chuckles]
Um, you know,
- I laugh but it’s quite serious... - [Stewart] Yes.
...what happens when people get arrested in this country.
Especially if you are, uh, poor.
Uh, if you don’t have the means to, um, turn yourself in.
Um, and that’s the vast majority of people that get arrested in this country.
- Three out of four people... - Yeah.
...that are currently incarcerated
live right by or below the supplemental poverty line.
So we’re literally talking about poor folks
that are getting swept up in the system.
When I got arrested, they came with dogs.
I got tased right in front of my two-year-old nephew.
Like, people are getting brutalized when they get arrested.
I remember my first time getting arrested was stealing a bottle of Hennessy, right?
I was 15 years old. 15 years old. Fifteen.
We’re in a car, we’re drinking.
Police pull behind us, we get yanked out of the car.
And there’s a phrase that everybody knows who’ve been brutalized by the police.
Everybody knows this phrase.
- It’s "quit resisting." - [Stewart] Right.
And when they say that, they know that is a green light
- to brutalize you. - [Stewart] Right.
That was my first instance of getting arrested.
Fifteen years old, for a bottle of Hennessy, getting beat up by the cops.
So, you know, no--
When you see that-- When you watch somebody
and they say, like, "Well, you know,
if you had just taken money from your charitable foundation
and bought the Hennessy,
and pretended that it was an expense for there,
everything would be fucking fine."
Like, that must be infuriating.
I mean, how the great Bryan Stevenson puts it,
"In this country, if you are wealthy and guilty,
you’re treated better than if you’re poor and innocent."
We do have two different systems of justice.
One for those who are poor and those with resources.
And it’s very different. We’re seeing that play out right now.
I think a big part of the sort of playing down of these charges that we’ve seen
is what the media has done.
I mean, I think they were expecting something explosive. And not really--
- But they created that expectation. - For sure, for sure.
I mean, they were hoping for a perp walk and maybe an orange jumpsuit.
But this is a process, right?
There’s an arraignment,
and this was just the first act
of what will be a very long and drawn-out process.
But to their point though, this is unprecedented to some degree
because of who Donald Trump is.
He is a former president.
And, you know, I’m a law professor.
- We don’t lead very exciting lives, but-- - Stop it.
I mean, this is the most fun I’ve had in a while.
- What? - [audience laughs]
We have a long haul to go.
We don’t know what evidence Alvin Bragg has.
We don’t know whether these charges are thin
because we don’t know what’s underlying them.
And so to say, "It’s a weak case," it’s this or that,
we don’t know that. They don’t know that.
None of those people have been to law school, and I know that.
[Stewart, audience laughing]
Well, that must be frustrating too.
[audience applauds]
So, you know, after this, the process is, you know,
-"We’ll see what the evidence is," right? - [Stewart] Mm-hmm.
The problem with everybody else in the system,
which is 97% of people take a plea deal--
Most people who take a plea deal never see the evidence against them.
Never see the evidence against them.
- [Stewart] Is that-- - Ever.
- That’s true? - That is true.
They never see the evidence, so they’re taking plea deals.
I’m gonna tell you why, right?
Like, so when you are arrested,
there-- there are two main factors in our current system
that dictates the severity of your stay and the length of your stay.
And it is if you can make bail and if you can buy yourself an attorney.
If you can’t do those two things,
you’re getting a public defender who are overworked and underpaid...
- Right. Toughest job of all. - ...have dozens of people on their caseload.
- Toughest job in law. - Toughest job on the beat.
So you take the deal, you don’t see the evidence-- and get this--
They don’t have to tell you about the collateral consequences you face
after you take the deal.
So the 97% of people that are taking these deals
don’t even know that they’re gonna face 40,000 legal restrictions
after they serve their time.
How is that ok-- How is that legal?
Well, so, first of all, the entire legal system--
[Stewart] I don’t mean to look at you like, "You created this system!"
- [audience laughing] - Melissa?
I just work here.
- Um-- - [Stewart] It really is.
In-- As a general matter on both the civil side and the criminal side,
most cases end with a settlement,
whether that is on the civil side an actual settlement between the parties.
And we learned a lot about that during the #MeToo era
with nondisclosure agreements and settlement of certain cases.
But on the criminal side, the settlement is the plea deal.
And if you are poor, if you don’t have money for bail,
if you are worried about your job,
and they’re offering you a misdemeanor-- that may have collateral consequences...
- [Jordan] Yeah. - ...that you don’t know about.
But a misdemeanor as opposed to jail time,
you might just take it and get railroaded into this and th--
[Stewart] You have no recourse.
- I mean, that’s-- that’s part of it. - No, you don’t.
And is that the shock that we’re seeing in this system?
This idea that, "Oh, my God, he’s gonna have to face consequences."
For sure. I mean, again, this is a man
who is no stranger to legal liability, both civil--
Um, he hasn’t had criminal liability against him.
Now it looks like not only may he have criminal exposure in this case,
but there may also be other cases both at the state level in Georgia
- and at the federal level that-- - But he only hasn’t had criminal exposure
- because of his resources. - No-- Undoubtedly.
A normal person who committed those things
- would have criminal exposure. - Un-Undoubt--
And even now, his treatment in the legal system
reflects the incredible privileges that he does have.
Jay, there’s gotta be a ray of lightness, and you-- you know,
in getting to know you a little bit here--
I am shocked by what you went through and your resilience to that.
Is there a light here that we can learn from?
- Is there something to take from this? - Two points.
So I wanna make a point about the system itself
and what we’re up against,
and then what we can actually do, right?
Or give people a green light to do something.
So this judicial bureaucracy, right?
- [Stewart] Mm-hmm. - Just to give everybody
a sense of what we have been able to build or allow being built under our watch.
Since 1985-- my entire life-- we’ve spent $11 trillion building this system.
Eleven trillion dollars. That’s four times what we spent in Syria and Iraq.
We are talking about a nation-building strategy
that has forced America to become the largest jailor, point one.
Point two, right,
that it is the second-largest employer in the world.
- Department of Defense, first. - What?
The American judicial bureaucracy, second, Walmart, third, right?
- That’s how big it is. - What?
Yes, that’s how big it is. Employs 2.5 million people.
Right? A lot of people are tied to this.
Three, they-- they spend 300 million-- $300 billion every single year.
Three hundred billion dollars every single year.
And they have these associations and lobbyists.
I’ve been against these lobbyists in the state houses.
They show up in their Armani suits smelling like a Macy’s counter,
- and they’re scary. Right? - [chuckling]
- So it’s-- it’s a protective shield... - [Stewart] Mm-hmm.
...that we’re talking about, and it focuses on poor people.
Again, three out of four people that get sucked up in the system
are living below the supplemental poverty line.
Like, poor people to the justice system is like Big Macs to McDonald’s.
It is a system, and it-- and it works,
and we don’t have a... [stammers] ...effective justice system.
We trade justice for judicial efficiency.
- But let me tell you this-- - I’m hoping there’s a "but" in here, Jay.
- [Jordan] I can tell you here-- - Because right now,
I’m just feeling like, "Oh, God."
I am hopeful for all the people out there
that are like, "We can do something about it."
So we always get turned around when we say,
"Well, I want to abolish the system
or reform the system or transform the system,"
and you’re like, "Oh, you’re too woke," or "That’s too progressive," right?
Well, let me tell you something, in the Declaration of Independence--
In the Declaration of Independence of this country,
we stop reading when it says,
"Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
But what... [stammers] ...say-- What they say after that gives me hope.
It says that any moment in time that government becomes destructive to us
means it is the right of the people to abolish or alter it
and create a new system of government.
So if you’re talking about abolition or reform,
it is not that you’re too woke, it’s you’re patriotic.
So please take up, you know...
- [stammers] ...a legal appeal-- - [exclaims] Yeah! Come on!
[stammers] Become a lobbyist,
- become a law professor-- - Jay Jordan!
Become an organizer because we need--
That’s the only way we’re gonna get through this.
- I needed that! - [audience laughs]
That was like a Jamba Juice. Yes!
[audience laughs]
- Thank you, both... - [chuckles]
...for being here and-and for giving us, uh, your-- your wisdom, your analysis
and most importantly, your perspective.
Uh, thank you very much.
Jay Jordan. Melissa Murray.
- [audience applauding] - Uh, thank you both.
All right, everybody, that is our show.
Uh, get your frequent viewer cards punched before you leave.
If you want more content there, head to our website.
Uh, Elon just turned it into a Doge website.
[audience laughing]
You’ll love it. Uh, I also got a podcast there
that I record from the lighthouse that I call my home.
All right, we’re ending tonight with one final "for fuck’s sake."
[Jake Tapper] I’m gonna interrupt you
- for one second-- - [guest] I think--
[Tapper] I’m gonna interrupt you because this is
one of the photographs that we just got.
The photograph is stark, and-- and historic as we look at it.
Donald Trump, uh, with a--
I don’t know how to characterize his face,
but certainly a serious expression on his face. Uh--
[audience laughing]
[Tapper] Alyssa Farah Griffin, is she-- is she with us?
If she is, I-I’d love her to weigh in
on what she sees in this-- in this picture.
[Griffin] Jake. I mean, that-- that-- that’s a man who looks like a defendant.
[audience laughing]